Polemon of Laodicea

Marcus Antonius Polemon (; c. 90 – 144 AD) or Antonius Polemon, also known as Polemon of Smyrna or Polemon of Laodicea , was a sophist who lived in the 2nd century.

His son Attalus and great-grandson Hermocrates of Phocaea were also notable sophists.

Early life Polemon was Anatolian Greek from a family of Roman consular rank. He was the grandson of Polemon II of Pontus.

He was born in Laodicea on the Lycus in Phrygia (modern Turkey), however, he spent a great part of his life in Smyrna (modern İzmir, Turkey). From early manhood, he received civic honors from the citizens of Smyrna for his services to the city.

In Smyrna he was educated by Scopelianos of Klazomenai. He then attended the school of Timocrates of Heracleia for four years. After that he travelled to Bithynia to learn from the Sophist Dio Chrysostom. Hadrian not only admitted he ruled with Polemon's advice, but Polemon accompanied the emperor during his travels in Greece and Asia Minor. When his enemies accused Polemon of spending funds Hadrian had given him to benefit the city of Smyrna, the emperor defended the sophist with a letter declaring that Polemon had rendered Hadrian an account of the moneys entrusted to him. Polemon gave the dedicatory oration to Hadrian's Temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens, which G.W. Bowersock speculates was "an embarrassing repudiation of the obvious person for the occasion, Herodes Atticus.

Three times he headed a legation dispatched by Smyrna to the emperor. Under Hadrian he was made strategos, and subsequently appointed strategos for life. He was a priest of Dionysos and agonothetes of the athletic competitions that took place in Smyrna in honour of the emperor Hadrian. Owing to Polemon's rhetorical skills the emperor stopped favoring Ephesos and endowed Smyrna with 10 million drachmae, which financed the building of a new grain market, a gymnasium, and a temple.

Works Polemon's treatise on physiognomy is preserved in a 14th-century Arabic translation. The only fully surviving works of Polemon are his funeral orations for the Athenians generals Callimachus and Cynaegirus, who died at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC. These orations are titled logoi epitaphioi (epitaphs). His rhetorical compositions were subjects that were taken from Athenian history.